December 06, 2012

shiny and bright

I was reminded of this post today when I was driving my car in for its third service appointment in as many weeks. When I went looking for it in my blog archives I was surprised to find that I wrote this almost exactly a year ago. Funny how that works. I hope you have a truly extraordinary and restorative weekend planned, and that you find a few moments to stop and enjoy it all. This beautiful, bright, shiny season. What a joy it can be.

I'm convinced the stress of this season doesn't come with the over-doing of it all. It isn't the long lines and even longer gift lists, or our desire to make each holiday season more glittery, festive and fun than ever before. It isn't because we don't want to enjoy the small, simple pleasures of this season, it's because enjoying the small, simple pleasures of this season must be squeezed in around the day-to-day business of life. It's the car that won't start, the permission slip you can't find, the toilets that need scrubbing and the small mountain of laundry. It's the trash to be put on the curb on collection day, a driver's license to renew, homework to be checked and dinner to go on the table. These are our undoing.

We want to put on Christmas music and sit and admire the tree. We want to make small gifts and write heartfelt notes of appreciation to friends and co-workers. We want to decorate gingerbread houses and cookies, sit and read Christmas stories with our children, watch holiday movies every night. But it all has to be squeezed in around the everyday, ordinary, dailyness of life.

Having all of this is an enormous blessing, I know that. The daily and the extraordinary woven together, this is the fabric of our family life. And some days I'm better at remembering that than others. But I keep trying.